Border clashes in Tijuana have immigration advocates mobilized

PHOENIX – Against the backdrop of tear gas and border closures in
Tijuana over the weekend, several pro-immigrant groups are rushing to
meet the increasing needs of asylum seekers.

One of those organizations is the Kino Border Initiative, a
faith-based non-profit organization known as KBI in Nogales, Arizona.

Sean Carroll, the group’s executive director, said KBI collaborates
with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project in Arizona and
the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, based in Washington, D.C. Both
organizations provide legal services to migrants to help them better
understand the asylum process.

“The Catholic Legal Immigration Network’s staff is coming
periodically from D.C. to Nogales providing information to migrants so
that they are better informed before they are received by U.S. customs,”
Carroll said.

On Sunday, hundreds of migrants including mothers and their children,
rushed past clouds of tear gas fired by U.S. Customs and Border
Protection agents at the San Ysidro port of entry at the
California-Mexico border, one of the busiest international crossings in
the world. Border Patrol agents said the migrants were throwing rocks
and trying to evade Mexican police. In response, Border Patrol agents
temporarily shut down the border from about 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The migrants are part of the caravan of people, mostly from
Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, that has been slowly making its way
north for several months. An estimate 5,000 migrants are waiting in
Tijuana now, hoping to present themselves to U.S. officials and seek
asylum. That number is expected to grow – perhaps to as many as 10,000 –
as more caravan members reach the border. Tijuana officials say they’re
unprepared for such numbers, and they’ve asked the United Nations for
aid.

Although the caravan did not wind up in Arizona, some in the state
fear similar scenes could play out near Nogales and Naco. As of Nov. 21,
327 asylum seekers were waiting in Nogales, Sonora.

In the past few years, the number of cases for people seeking asylum
has increased, Phoenix immigration lawyer Ray Ybarra Maldonado said.

“You have to prove that you have a fear or a realistic probability of
returning to your country and you’re going to be exposed to a probable
violence if you’re there based on certain categories, so those are the
first two things you have to prove, which is tough,” Ybarra Maldonado
said.

According the Department of Homeland Security, in 2016 the number of asylum applications grew by 39 percent from the year before.

“The last thing you have to prove is that fear or violence is related
to you being a member of a certain social group, religion or
nationality, or the general protections people speak of civil rights
here in the country,” Ybarra Maldonado continued. “If you’re just afraid
of the general narco violence in Mexico, you’re not going to win your
case at all.”

Matthew Sussis, assistant director of communications for the Center
for Immigration Studies in Washington D.C., a non-profit research
organization that opposes both illegal and legal immigration into the
U.S., says one of the difficulties of allowing people into the country
while their cases are being considered is getting them to attend their
court hearing. A 2017 Justice Department report, however, shows 60 to 75 percent of non-detained migrants attend their court hearings.

“The difficulty is that we right now don’t have the capacity for
several reasons to detain people once they pass credible-fear
screenings,” Sussis said. “It’s very easy to just disappear into the
interior of the country.

“So when we talk about fixing our asylum laws, we talk about closing
those loopholes so people with legitimate asylum claims can still get in
without taking in large numbers of people who have simply weak or made
up claims of asylum.”

Salvador Macias, an immigration attorney in Phoenix, doesn’t foresee a slowdown of people seeking asylum in the U.S.

“I think as long as you have a very prosperous nation next to a
country that has suffered decades of suppression, pain and poverty, you
will always have immigrants trying to get to the more prosperous land,”
he said.

More by SuElen Rivera

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